Half-Life 2 Deathmatch Confirmed

Satertek writes "Following up a previous post, a teaser was posted on the Steam website with the image HL2DM.jpg entitled 'Soon', confirming rumors of a Half-Life 2 Multiplayer Deathmatch game. It was also brought up on the forums by Valve. It will be released alongside the SDK sometime this week." Update: 12/01 13:49 GMT by T : Since this was written, "this week" has turned into "now"; the update was released last night.

Comments

Re:1st Prize $5000, 2nd-3rd $3000 Map competition

[OgreChow]

I would see this as more of a way to get your name out there and as a resume-builder than an opportunity for cash.
Map-making can be a great way to show off your design skills if you want to break into the gaming industry.

Re:Was there any reason-

[Iamdeusex]

That's bull. There are tons of people switched over to CS:Source. Just check the server list. It certainly isn't Half Life 2: Multiplayer, I'll agree with that, but that doesn't mean that CS:Source sucks. They made some graphical improvements, yes, but they also made some gameplay improvements as well, i.e. smoke grenades are actually really useful now, flashbangs are far superior to their counterparts in 1.6, you don't get damaged through walls and such by nades, etc. Now, the only complaint I have is that the headshots seem to be rampant in Source, but whether that's just crap or a valid observation, I have no proof for. Still, overall it's a great improvement over CS 1.6, and once the map support is there, and now that the SDK is out, it will definitely take over 1.6.

Re:Steam Subscription Fee?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet these games are still widely copied by people who justify their activity with vague talk of 'freedom' and 'rights' (ie right to pirate).
I can feel the Publishers' ire beginning to rise. Just because Half-Life 2 is good doesn't excuse this copying. Remember, this is why so many publishers moved to copy protection, EULAs and their ilk. As a long time game publisher, I'm personally deeply offended by this kind of anti-publisher, anti-creative behaviour creeping into the players' actions. I guess in some ways, I still want the games I try to sell over the counter to actually be bought by more than 50 percent of the people who play them, and not just sell a licence to hundreds of people at a time.

Ever wondered why the copy-protection measures are so much more draconian in games than elsewhere? It's because people who play games are quite happy to copy them, and it's extremely difficult to make money from them.

Re:Steam Subscription Fee?

[billo]

Frankly, I love Steam.

I love that I can buy a game without going to a store.

I love that I can download the game to as many computers as I want (at work, at home) and play it anywhere with my personal license (username and passowrd.)

I love that I can run a linux-based game server myself, modify the rules on it myself with perl scripts, and not pay extra money for that right.

I love that STEAM creates an authentication mechanism so I can uniquely identify 1337 h4x0r 12-year-old idiots and ban them for life when they cause trouble on my server.

I love that a small software company can break the large game publishers channel control and sell direct. Guess what, Vivendi? You're dead, and you just don't realize it yet. Muhahaha.

Cheers.

Re:Was there any reason-

[drinkypoo]

It's basically the same thing that motivates ill will towards redhat. Well, besides the fact that it sucks. They provided us this single platform that came in different flavors and let us all beta test it for them, then they decided to make the enterprise level version a separate product and support the desktop version of redhat (now called fedora, of course) very poorly, making no effort whatsoever to make it stable.

Quite similarly, Valve made a sequel to one of the best-loved first person shooters of all time, and it has ended up loaded with so-called copy protection that will turn out to be ineffectual in the long run (maybe not that long) and that has made it impossible for many of the people who are keeping them in business to actually play the game. Treating every customer like a potential criminal is a good way to chase people off towards someone who doesn't do so.